http://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days … -dcpv6gs33
Diana Vishneva: ‘I was taught not to spare myself’
Aged 40, Diana Vishneva is still a Mariinsky star, but changing gears and worried about the next generation. By Sarah Crompton
Red alert: Vishneva heads to London with the Mariinsky Ballet in the summer
NATASHA RAZINA
The Sunday Times, March 19 2017, 12:01am
Diana Vishneva is in Mauritius, putting her long, elegant feet up. “For the first time in 20 years, I’ve made time for a break for myself, to rest a little bit and stay away from work for a while.”
Is she still finding time to do a morning class? “God forbid,” she says, with a fastidious shudder you can almost hear down the phone line as the interpreter translates. “I am so relaxed. If I wanted to do some exercise, I would go to Paris. Here I just want to stay away from ballet — to forget about ballet. But of course that is impossible.”
She laughs. Vishneva can’t escape her calling. She is one of the most distinctive and distinguished dancers in the world, one who has made a truly international career that reaches out from her home company, the Mariinsky, in St Petersburg, to encompass 12 years as a principal at American Ballet Theatre (ABT), and guest appearances and tours of programmes tailor-made for her talent.
She’ll be 41 this year, a crunch time for female dancers. Although she has stepped down from ABT — “I will continue to dance with them, but it will be a new chapter” — she still dances with the Mariinsky. This summer, she comes with them to London to dance in Alexei Ratmansky’s fluent staging of Anna Karenina and in Alberto Alonso’s Carmen Suite, created for the prima ballerina Maya Plisetskaya. Both works play to Vishneva’s powerful dramatic sense, the way she combines a seemingly effortless technique with an ability to embody a role. Despite her dark, fragile appearance, on stage she is a force of nature.
This, she says, comes from the way she was taught. “I was lucky. I came from a generation of teachers who were great at preparing us. Now they are slowly departing, and that is why I search for choreographers who can create for me. If you have a dramatic gift, they will draw it out of you and display it.”
Today’s dancers are weaker. There is not so much shouting
Talking about her “thirst for learning” leads to a conversation about whether today’s dancers have the same almost holy attitude to their art that was once the hallmark of Russian ballet. Vishneva trained at the Vaganova Academy, in St Petersburg, which produced Nijinsky, Pavlova, Karsavina, Nureyev and Natalia Makarova, and was once a place where centuries of tradition were built into the dancers’ bones.
“Today’s dancers are weaker, less prepared even than our graduation class,” she says firmly. “If you look at conditions at the school now, they are so much improved. It is warm, clean, well refurbished. I remember how it was in my time. There were holes in the floor and it was always terribly cold, because the window frames were not fixed properly. But there was good discipline and we were very concentrated. Now, with this different style, with the internet — young people get so much information, and their attention is taken away from work. But every day is important.”
She notes, too, the decline in competition for places. “When we were entering the school, 90 people were competing for one place. That is why we were so determined. We were not taught twice what to do, because we could be kicked out if we didn’t do what was demanded of us. Maybe now children are happier. There is not so much shouting and demands — but probably this is a reason as well. When I was at school, I was taught not to spare myself, to give everything I had.”
In part, this reflects the sense many older dancers have that improvements in conditions have not resulted in improvements in performance, that devotion to ballet has been lost as material circumstances have improved. But in Vishneva’s case, there is a further cause for concern: the Bolshoi-trained Nikolai Tsiskaridze is now head of the St Petersburg school, and she fears the purity of the Mariinsky style is being lost.
Vishneva as Princess Aurora in Sleeping Beauty during her time with the American Ballet Theatre, where she spent 12 years as principal
GLENN KOENIG
“There are different nuances in the schools, between the Bolshoi and the Mariinsky,” she says. “He claims it is the same, but the style, the movements, the breathing, the manner is different. Now Tsiskaridze is in St Petersburg, while Makhar Vaziev [who was trained in St Petersburg] is at the Bolshoi. And both claim it is the same style because it is convenient for them to say that. But what I hear is upsetting to me.”
She is much cheered, though, by the way Russian dance is now more willing to open itself up to new choreography and fresh ideas, something she has encouraged by running a dance festival in Moscow that gives aspiring choreographers opportunities to make work. “About three years ago, audiences were still cautious. Now ballet-goers in Russia don’t feel such antagonism towards the new. Their love for ballet doesn’t go away, but they are getting more accustomed to modern dance.”
As for herself, she is thinking of a new project, which she doesn’t want to jinx by talking about; and with three books coming out that celebrate her career to this point, she is considering the next stage. But surely, I say, you can go on for ever? She laughs again.
“We can remember Pliset-skaya, who danced until she was 60, or Martha Graham and Pina Bausch, who danced regardless of age. These are individual figures, these great dancers, and they have my admiration. It is difficult to say what I will go on to do, because it will depend on many factors — on health, on my physical state. Dancers always want to dance as long as they can, but sometimes you feel you are tired, psychologically tired, not only physically.
“But I am interested in the synthesis of arts. I love drama and theatre, and maybe they will cross my way as well. I’m always open to experiments and to risks — this is the way I have constructed for myself.”
